Archive for July 26th, 2012

A Floundering Ship-Syria
‘Rats leave the sinking ship’you must have heard before. In fact rats move in a sinking ship judging from the near collapse of Syria. It was long in coming and the crew are a motley mixture of sects that are attracting some rats from far off. The Arab Spring was a reef that the ship of Bashar al-Assad could not avoid. The “Friends of Syria” meeting in late February met in Tunis in order to ship arms to Syrian rebels. Friends are in name only. In fact all those Sunni factions wherever they are want to settle scores with Shi’ia faction supporting al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and members of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),- like Qatar and Kuwait, are friends on geopolitical grounds. If the royal family of Bahrain,-Sunnis, has a stranglehold on the majority Shi’ia population the troops sent by the Saudi government are there to prop up the King.
Little is known about the exact nature of Syria’s opposition. But it must be at present what we saw at the initial stages of the Arab Spring, many protesting on genuine grounds for more political freedom. We saw this in Libya and in Egypt. Jihadists are eying for their chance to come in. U.S. Ambassador Rob Ford, who personally met with opposition groups before he left Syria, stated that the opposition is made up of two main constituent groups. The first more liberal and secular, while the second is Jihadist in outlook. There will always be token moderates as in the case of Mali or in Egypt. In the former the rebels that declared Azawad were Taureg separatists. Now the north is under foreign mercenaries and a wing of al-Qaeda. The moderates will not be able to hold on given the unstable nature of ‘friends.’ Loyalty to the country is not an issue as much as to the sect and tribe.
To quote‘Little is known about whether the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood resembles their Egyptian equivalents or whether they draw from more nefarious influences from groups like the Salafist Al-Nour Party in Egypt. Perhaps most disturbing of all was official U.S. Government confirmation that Al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun to conduct operations in Syria against the Assad government.’(www.opencanada.org/news/the-pitfalls-of-arming-syrias-opposition/)
Mighty mess grows out of acorns like war on terror in Iraq.
benny